


popsicle blues

by nadin



Series: in sickness and in health [2]
Category: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Diana is a great girlfreind, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Steve hates medical manipulations, autocorrect is not always correct, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26080705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadin/pseuds/nadin
Summary: how did i let you talk me into this?Steve typed.Diana looked up from her coffee, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she read his text. “You trusted my impeccable judgement?” she offered, trying and mostly failing to keep a straight face.He huffed.remind me to never do it again....or the one in which Steve gets his tonsils removed, and it's not fun.
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor
Series: in sickness and in health [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893313
Comments: 20
Kudos: 102





	popsicle blues

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I promised you to post a companion piece for [connect the dots](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25421251) and here it is! I hope you'll like it :)

Steve Trevor hated hospitals.

He had hated them when his plane had been hit during the war and he had ended up in one with a broken arm, a few cracked ribs and a concussion. He had hated them when Charlie had gotten shot in the leg and Steve and Sameer had taken turns smuggling food and the occasional beer to him to lift his spirits. And he sure as hell hated them now, a hundred years later when Diana had talked him into—no, scratch that, when she had _dragged_ him to have his tonsils removed.

“I was born with them,” Steve had tried to argue. “It stands to reason that I wouldn’t have them if I didn’t need them.”

“If they make you sick constantly, they have overstayed their welcome,” she had countered without missing one beat.

“I’m not—I’m not _constantly_ sick.”

“Every several weeks is above average even for you,” Diana had deadpanned.

He truly hadn’t had a clue how to even respond to that, half-convinced that there had been a thinly veiled jibe somewhere in her statement but failing to see what it was, exactly.

And that was how he had ended up in a ward with a post-anaesthesia headache, feeling dizzy and nauseated. And yeah, sans his tonsils.

Steve blinked his eyes open, wincing at the sterile smell of disinfectants and alcohol hanging around him. His throat hurt, making him wonder absently if maybe someone had gone and simply ripped out his jugular while he was out of it. He would have checked, if he didn’t feel like someone had also run him over with a truck. A few times.

His stomach rolled uncomfortably, and for a moment, he thought he was going to be sick. Except his throat ached so badly he feared that getting sick would also cause him to pass out from the pain.

This was definitely worse than falling from the sky in a half-destroyed plane, he decided.

“Hey.”

Steve turned to find Diana sitting by his bed.

She smiled at him and brushed her hand through his hair, sweeping it back from his forehead. Steve swallowed. And regretted it immediately. He wondered, again, if they had removed more than just his tonsils. If they’d gone ahead and cut out everything there was, just for the hell of it. 

His doctor, when they had discussed the procedure, had called it a routine surgery. A term that Steve didn’t quite understand—how can something involving drugs and scalpels be called _routine?_ His nurse had also told Steve that he would feel slight discomfort afterwards, from the stitches as well as the anaesthesia. _This_ was not slight. This was about as awful as anything he could ever imagine.

Steve silently vowed to call them all liars, as soon as he could talk.

He blinked and tried to focus on Diana and not his unsettled stomach or the slight unsteadiness of the walls around him.

She picked up his hand with both of hers and pressed a kiss to his fingers. “You did well,” she murmured. 

He squeezed her hand gratefully in return. Later, he would likely give her hell for dragging him into this nightmare, but for now, he was simply happy she was there.

* * *

The hospital kept him for several more hours to make sure that he didn’t have an adverse reaction to any of the medication. They made him drink two glasses of cold water to make sure he could swallow liquids and was not likely to suffer from dehydration. (When the nurse had said that, Steve wondered if it was the right time to list all the other things he was suffering from.) 

The nurse had also told him that speaking would be uncomfortable for a while and that he should refrain from it until it stopped being painful. He could have sworn that Diana had smirked at that, but she hadn’t said anything and he… well, he couldn’t comment, really.

By the time they signed the discharge papers, received all final instructions and made it home, it was early evening.

He stepped into the apartment after Diana and locked the door. She dropped her keys in a bowl on the table by the door and turned to him.

“Are you alright?” she asked, her fingers trailing along the line of his jaw.

At the hospital, especially after the operation, she had been the one who’d listened to what the doctors and nurses had been saying, taking notes and asking questions. More because it was her thing, but also, Steve suspected, because he had been too out of it to be trusted with any information. She had seemed so collected then, so composed in a place that was making him want to turn around and run out the door each time her hand slipped out of his.

But there was worry behind her eyes now that he hadn’t noticed earlier, and Steve found himself nodding and offering her a small smile because, even though he was far from alright, and also not even clear on what qualified as _alright_ at this moment, he had never once thought of what this had had to feel like for her. He was suddenly ashamed for that oversight. That, and the tired lines near the corners of her eyes and the tense line of her shoulders that betrayed the concern his surgery had caused her. 

She watched him closely for another moment, and then nodded, too. Her thumb swept along his chin, before she leaned in to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

“Let’s get you settled, yes?”

She left Steve to take his jacket off and disappeared in the kitchen only to return a minute later with a bottle of baby Tylenol and a dessert spoon.

Steve gazed up at her quizzically.

“This should help with the pain for the first couple of days,” Diana explained. “And the pills might be more painful to swallow than this.”

He wanted to ask her why on bloody earth they even had _baby_ Tylenol—and if it tasted better than the adult medication, while he was at it—but she had a point, and the argument didn’t feel worth the trouble.

Obediently, he swallowed two spoonfuls and decided to keep his comments to himself.

“Would you like to have something to eat?” Diana inquired.

He was actually hungry, he realized with a jolt of surprise. Unbeknownst to him, the postoperative nausea had ebbed, replaced by hungry tugs in the pit of his stomach, reminding Steve that he hadn’t eaten anything since the previous evening.

He nodded, and then pulled his phone out of the pocket of his jeans.

 **a steak and beer would be nice,** he typed the text to Diana.

Her phone pinged and he watched her smirk as she read his message.

He plopped down on the couch when she walked away and tipped his head back and tried very, very hard not to think about the fact that there were currently _stitches_ , on the _inside_ of his throat. Which, of course, had him thinking about just that. Which made him feel mildly nauseated again.

He cracked one eye open when he heard the sound of her footsteps returning and found Diana standing before him, a box of apple juice and a lime popsicle in her hands.

Steve blinked. And made a grab for his phone as he sat up straighter.

**you have GOT to be kidding me.**

Diana hummed. “You can’t have solid food, Steve. Or anything hot, it will hurt. Or alcohol. Have you not been listening to what the doctor said?”

He huffed through his nose, and glared at her for good measure. Of course, he had not been listening. He had just had someone cut parts of his throat out, for heaven’s sake! He wished her had, though. Now he really wished he had made sure to pay attention so he knew for a fact whether she was pulling his leg or not.

Except it made sense. Probably. That something solid or hot would irritate the stitched-up areas. And they hurt quite a bit as they were. 

But a juice box?!

**i’m not five!**

“Then stop acting like you are and have your popsicle,” Diana said dryly.

Steve failed to figure out if it was meant to be as sarcastic as it sounded.

He sighed. For a moment, he eyed the package in her hand, his face scrunched.

 **do we have grape?** he typed.

Diana pressed her lips around a smile.

“No, but I could go to the store, if you’d like,” she offered.

Steve’s hand darted forward to wrap around her wrist before she could take so much as a step away. He shook his head and took the juice box from her, and then wrapped his free arm around her thighs, pulling her towards him and resting his forehead against her sternum.

A moment passed, and then Diana’s fingers moved through his hair—once, twice.

“Would you like me to stay with you?” she asked, quietly.

He waited a moment, breathing her in. She ran her hand through his hair once more before he looked up and nodded.

 **why do we have juice boxes, anyway?** he asked once she settled next to him and he poked the straw through the foil, taking a sip. 

Okay, this was, admittedly, not beer but it wasn’t that bad. Especially as cold as it was.

“I had a feeling you’d be acting like a child,” Diana noted, her tone nonchalant.

Steve’s jaw dropped a little. He considered, for a moment, throwing the popsicle at her... but chose not to prove her point.

* * *

It took Steve all of two hours to figure out that he truly hated feeling the way he did. His throat felt sore and uncomfortable to the point where he started to wonder at some point if maybe Diana could call in a favour and ask one of her divine relatives to turn back time so he could have all the parts of his body—that perhaps never needed to be taken out—given back to him. To hell with frequent colds! They suddenly felt like the lesser of two evils.

He was hungry still, even after that popsicle and a bowl of ice-cream and carton of yogurt.

When Diana walked past him with a plate of warmed-up leftovers of the Thai food they’d had for dinner the night before, he was certain he was going to salivate all over the entire apartment, it smelled so good. She had the mercy to not eat right in front of him, but it felt like weak consolation when Steve knew that the magical Styrofoam containers were right there in their fridge.

 **you don’t have to hide from me in your office,** he texted her.

“I have some work to finish,” she said as she leaned in to brush a quick kiss to his cheek. “Won’t be long.”

He didn’t argue even though he knew that it was likely _mostly_ a lie.

He also vowed to never look down on anything that felt like normal food ever again. Even cheap fast-food. In fact, he was going to eat the entire menu of that small Chinese place down the street as soon as he was no longer at risk of ripping open his stitches. In his _throat_.

What the hell was he thinking when he had said yes to it all?

He spent the next hour trying very hard not to fantasize about pizza.

Eventually, as the evening continued to wear on, Steve ended up on the couch with his head in Diana’s lap and her hand threading idly through his hair while something meaningless played on TV. Having taken another dose of baby Tylenol—god help him, this was the first time ever that Steve was glad none of his friends from his “old life” were still around to witness his mortification—he was feeling drowsy and, for the first time since walking out of the hospital, pleasantly loose.

Maybe they should switch all of their drugs to something made for kids, he thought absently, and then decided he was not in the soundest state of mind if he was seriously considering that.

“Are you feeling alright?” Diana asked him, after a while.

Steve rolled onto his back to look at her and nodded, feeling a little dazed and momentarily distracted when he found her smiling at him.

He grabbed his phone.

 **the five-year-old me would find this fun,** he typed. **the ice cream part. the present-day me is horrified over my sugar levels.**

**makes me feel old.**

**and i’m still hungry, even after half a pint from your stash.**

Diana laughed softly when she read it. “A few days,” she said, as she curled forward to kiss the top of his head. “It will get better in a few days.”

He made a face. The past several hours had been unpleasant enough. He didn’t want to imagine a few days of this. He recalled, with more fondness than he liked, that one and only hospital stay of his and playing cards with the guys sharing his ward after hours.

At some point, Steve drifted off, lulled by the hum of the TV and the comfort of Diana’s nearness. That, and probably the drugs. 

* * *

He woke up in the morning, groggy and disoriented, his throat feeling like someone had scrubbed it with a rusty spoon and then polished it with sandpaper.

He recalled, vaguely, Diana rousing him sometime around midnight and steering him towards the bedroom. She had helped him undress and he remembered wanting to make a suggestive comment about it and her taking advantage of him in his weak state, but all he actually could do at the time was nod a silent thank you and fall face-first on his pillow.

He had awoken a few hours later, in too much pain to sleep and Diana had given him more painkiller, gathering him to her afterwards and holding him until Steve had drifted off again to the sound of quiet words of comfort whispered in his ear.

And now he was shovelling red Jell-O into his mouth and promising himself over and over and over again that he would never, ever get sick again, whatever the cost. He briefly considered going back to the hospital and asking them to sew back on everything they had taken out. Problem was, he doubted that Diana would look favourably upon it, and she was, technically, stronger and likely to overpower him if he tried to escape. That, and Steve was not sure his tonsils were still around. How long did they keep stuff like that?

The idea of his body parts sitting somewhere in a room with white walls was more than a little unnerving. Should he have asked to keep them when he was leaving? He had seen on TV once some kid keeping his kidney stones in a jar filled with alcohol.

Granted, it had not been a very good movie.

 **how did i let you talk me into this?** Steve typed.

Diana looked up from her coffee, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she read his text.

“You trusted my impeccable judgement?” she offered, trying and mostly failing to keep a straight face.

He huffed.

**remind me to never do it again.**

And then, **c** **an you even remember the sound of my voice? cause i’m having trouble there.**

She rolled her eyes. “I do. As though I only heard it yesterday,” she said. “Because I did, in fact, only hear it yesterday.”

Steve scowled at her, which she ignored.

Diana leaned towards him, her fingers curling around the back of his neck as she pressed her lips to his forehead for a long moment. When she drew back, her gaze was soft. She brushed her thumb over the stubble coating his cheek.

“No fever,” she said.

When she smiled, Steve forgot what they were talking about.

And then she brushed a kiss to his lips, and he decided that he could forgive her anything. Even things that hurt like hell over 24 hours later.

* * *

Steve hadn’t asked her to stay home from work and spend another day with him, but she did so all the same. And though he had tried to pretend that there was no need for it, that he was perfectly capable of not maiming himself or starving to death in the eight hours that it took her to deal with all things old and valuable, he was grateful.

That was not to say that feeling poorly didn’t still make him feel annoyed and irritable. And his inability to get sufficiently distracted for an extended period of time was making it all the more frustrating.

Diana had stayed with him for an episode or two of some silly comedy about nothing, content to sit though laugh tracks with Steve’s arm around her. But then her phone dinged with a text and she’d had to retreat to the study to make a call. Steve had watched another episode and then channel-surfed for a while, more aware of the scratchy feeling in this throat that was starting to drive him nuts than what was happening on the screen.

In the kitchen, he’d found a jar of applesauce—seriously, where did all that strange stuff come from? Applesauce, Jell-O, baby Tylenol, juice boxes. Did they always have it in the house?—and had eaten it in the hopes of making the discomfort go away. It didn’t. Instead, the sweetened substance had only made him thirsty.

He’d tried to read next and instead spent nearly an hour grimacing each time he swallowed involuntarily, distracted by it and having to reread each page at least twice. By the end of that hour, he’d still had no idea what the book was even about.

At some point in the early afternoon, Diana had stepped out to get coffee and pastries for lunch and then came back with a box of grape popsicles. And as much as Steve had started to hate the idea of everything soft and cold and blended, he truly didn’t think he had ever loved her more than in that moment.

“You should try to get some sleep,” she offered as she pressed her palm to his forehead while Steve struggled with the wrapper.

She didn’t seem particularly worried though, which he hoped meant that he at least didn’t look like he was going to drop dead any second. Not that that was likely to happen, he reminded himself. But then again, she tended to take his maladies without much concern, always insisting that he didn’t need to be so dramatic. Even in the moments when he had, in fact, felt like he was on the brink of imminent death. Like that time last winter when he had ended up with a very bad case of the flu—the whole League had, actually—and had been incapacitated for nearly a month, as a result. So really, it could go either way.

Steve shook his head and tried very hard not to breathe too deeply near the bag of croissants she had brought as well. Damn, that was so unfair.

Diana searched his face for another moment and then leaned in to kiss him, properly, quite enjoying the way he seemed to have forgotten about his popsicle in two seconds flat while her mouth moved purposefully over his.

And then her phone started to ring again.

Steve groaned and dropped his forehead on her shoulder when she drew back, desperate to ask her to ignore it but knowing she wouldn’t see his text until after she answered the call.

Diana brushed her hand through his hair, her nails scratching the nape of his neck in reassurance.

“Won’t take long,” she promised, her lips brushing over his temple before she stepped out of his arms. “I trust you not to touch this,” she noted as she set the bag with pastries on the counter.

Steve glowered at her, and then sighed as he watched her leave.

It took long. Longer than he had expected. First, he could hear Diana’s voice behind the door leading to the study. Something about shipment this and excavation that, mostly too soft for him to catch anything important or particularly interesting. Not that he tried listening on purpose. Then, two more voices joined her, and then another one, minutes later. A conference call. And _those_ always went on for a while.

When she finally emerged from the study, almost an hour and a half later, she found him digging through a desk drawer in the living room, a crossword puzzle from the morning paper waiting for him in the kitchen—yet another attempt to do something with himself.

“Steve?” she paused next to him. “What are you doing?”

He typed a quick answer and continued his exploits.

Diana’s phone dinged.

“You’re looking for a penis,” she said, her voice laced with unmasked amusement.

Steve snapped his head up, his jaw dropping a little while heat rushed up his face.

He grabbed his phone, mortified to see that it was, in fact, what he’d said.

 **A PENCIL!!!** he typed, in all caps, three exclamation marks. And then huffed out a frustrated breath and rubbed his eyes. 

It was quite unbelievable, truly, that the people of the future had managed to put a man on the moon and invent something as remarkable as the internet, and cable television, and microwaves, and yet had failed to make something as seemingly simple as autocorrect work, well, _correctly_ most of the time.

Diana bit her lip around a smile.

“I can help with that,” she offered and, sidestepping away from the desk, she dug out two pencils from a different drawer. She handed them to Steve. “I’d help with the other thing, too, but you’re not advised to engage in, ah, adult activities for a few days.”

He looked up at her, hopeful.

**not advised but not prohibited, right?**

Diana pressed her lips together, the corners of her eyes crinkling with amusement. “Strongly not advised,” she said.

 **am i allowed to argue my case?** Steve inquired, rubbing the front of his throat.

She ignored his text, her frown deepening momentarily.

“What are you doing?”

He grimaced. **tits itching.**

***it’s**

**CHRIST**!

She lifted her gaze to his. “That bad?”

Steve grimaced. **you have no idea.**

“You should have something cold,” she offered in a practical voice.

**if you feed me any more ice-cream, i swear to god i will scream.**

Diana folded her arms over her chest. “If you scream, you'd rip your stitches,” she grumbled, shaking her head.

Steve snorted. **well, you almost pulled them out when you stuck your tongue down my throat.**

She rolled her eyes and walked away from him without dignifying his comment with an answer.

* * *

Diana wasn’t sure which one of them suggested doing a puzzle—a tacky thousand-piece one of the Justice League, no less, that Barry had given everyone last Christmas. To this day, Diana was sure that Clark had likely been the only one who had found it amusing. Most of them, she suspected, shoved their boxes to the back of their closets in hopes of never seeing them again.

She glanced at the image on the front, all six of them standing tall and proud—and looking very strange—and wondered if Arthur had actually tossed his into the fire.

But, beggars couldn’t be choosers and Steve was miserable, and she was not permitted to distract him in the way she knew he would have liked best. Besides, for all the brave faces she had been putting on, she had been worried, scared, more concerned than she was willing to let on. As it was, they both needed something to put their minds off the whole thing.

So, here they were, sitting in front of a coffee table with small, colourful pieces of pressed cardboard spilled before them.

Diana’s phone dinged with a text from Steve, her lips curving into a smile when she read the message.

**this is weird**

“It is,” she admitted. The entire idea of merchandise and things like, well, this very puzzle with her face all over them still bewildered her to no end. “They got my shield wrong.”

Steve glanced at her, wrinkling his nose.

**you think your shield is weird?**

**i’m here looking for a piece with batman’s crotch on it. beat that.**

Diana bit her lip.

“Yes, alright. You win.” And then, after a pause. “You should mention it to Bruce sometime.”

 **i think i’ll mention it to barry,** Steve countered, after a moment of consideration. 

**and he’ll mention it to the entire continental usa.**

At that, she laughed.

It was odd indeed, all of it. Diana made a mental note to ask Lois, later, if she and Clark gave the puzzle a go. Lois, of all people, should have found the idea delightful and hilarious. But odd or not, it was, admittedly, better than watching Steve pace the place like a caged animal or try to scratch out his esophagus.

They were still at it the following afternoon, him working on Arthur and her trying to put together Victor, when an idea struck Diana, and she kicked herself mentally for not thinking of it sooner.

In a day or two, he would be allowed to start eating normal human food and not only things that came from the infant section of the store—Steve had had her swear a thousand times that it would stay between them for the rest of their lives.

She stood up and took him by the hand, pulling him to his feet as well.

Steve gazed up at her in complete puzzlement and even opened his mouth to ask what on Earth she was doing. In the end, though, he clamped it shut and followed Diana out of the apartment and into the bright, fresh afternoon.

She found his hand and laced her fingers through his, catching the smile that touched his lips out of the corner of her eyes. A hundred years on, and holding his hand still made her heart kick into a whole new gear.

**okay, so…**

**want to explain?**

Diana looked up from her phone when they paused in front of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream café a few blocks from their apartment, the small space half full even in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday.

She smiled and moved closer to him. Steve arched an eyebrow expectantly. She smoothed her palms down the front of his jacket and glanced towards the tubs of ice-cream in display freezers that she could see even from the street.

“Well, I suppose this is not the worst time to try every flavour they have and decide which one is the best once and for all,” she said, after a moment.

Steve chuckled and then broke into a wide smile. He was the one who grabbed her hand this time, pulling her inside.

**you’re on.**

* * *

“Phish food,” Steve said, three days later, his voice low and raspy—Diana had called it _sexy_ but he had yet to understand that sentiment. 

Sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him, a dozen tubs strewn over the coffee table before them, Diana shook her head. “Cherry Garcia,” she said, sticking a plastic spoon into her mouth.

He gaped at her, his jaw dropping a little.

In three days, they managed to make it through about one-third of the menu, but there were definite winners already all the same.

He still felt like crap, mostly. But now that he was allowed to eat soup—bland and lukewarm, mind you—and eggs, it was starting to feel mostly bearable. He had even slept through the previous night as though everything was normal. And frankly, he’d have to be an idiot not to appreciate eating gallons of ice-cream with Diana when she looked as pleased as she did in this particular moment as they were making their way through enough ice-cream to put someone in a diabetic coma.

“Caramel, marshmallows,” he argued. He tried not to think of how his voice still sounded like he had spent the past hundred years smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. It was supposed to go away by the end of the week, or so he had been told. “What’s not to like?”

He was tempted to mention that growing up, the closest thing he had to ice-cream was crunching on icicles after a particularly brutal storm. But, that was not entirely true, and he knew that Diana knew that as well.

“Cherries, chocolate,” Diana countered, smiling. “How can anything compete?”

Steve leaned towards her across the table and pressed his lips to hers, the kiss slow and lingering for a long moment before he pulled back. 

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Not half bad.”

Maybe he could even talk her into trying that Netflix & Chilll'd one tonight... 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, a million thanks to **akajb** for betaing, and to **EliseCollier** for helping me figure out a fun title. 
> 
> To those of you who read [A Road Paved In Gold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11508576/chapters/25824168) \- there will be an update sometime this week, stay tuned! 
> 
> Thank you all for reading this piece. Feedback, comments, thoughts are always appreciated - I will love you forever :) Also, what did you think of the new WW84 trailer and are you excited for the Snyder's cut of Justice League? Come yell with me!


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